J
JadeBlueSkies
I've been searching for a few days now for an answer to no avail.
The situation is that I am part of a group developing a complex,
multi-form application for Windows Mobile 5.0 on a Dell Axim x51. The
application is geared towards the elderly and must be simple and
appropriately responsive. During usability testing, a large issue came
up: the users were impatient about screen loading times, and so would
often press buttons (or on the screen in general) multiple times. This
would be simple to fix on a single form (simply deactivate buttons
until loading is complete), but because this is a multi-form
application, the screen presses register on all of the consecutive
loading forms.
We have two ideas for fixing this problem, but have had no luck with
either. The first is that when pressing on any button that leads to a
form change, we ask the device to lock (stop accepting input) and then
unlock the device once the form change is complete. I have checked just
about every group and the MSDN in an attempt to find out how to do
this, but there does not appear to be reference material in regards to
how to accomplish this.
The second idea was tag the message queue and filter out the messages
that occur during the times when the pages are loading, but this, in
concept, sounds like it may be unreliable and perhaps risky, as
important messages may be discarded.
Any advice on how to either lock the screen briefly from accepting
input or somehow filter button presses across multiple forms?
As a side note, we have tried changing pages to temporary loading
pages, and this failed for two reasons. First, the users felt that this
was confusing, and second, for many of the pages, the loading time is
so short that we would have to put the loading screen up for a minimum
"observable" time.
Thank you,
-Sam O.
The situation is that I am part of a group developing a complex,
multi-form application for Windows Mobile 5.0 on a Dell Axim x51. The
application is geared towards the elderly and must be simple and
appropriately responsive. During usability testing, a large issue came
up: the users were impatient about screen loading times, and so would
often press buttons (or on the screen in general) multiple times. This
would be simple to fix on a single form (simply deactivate buttons
until loading is complete), but because this is a multi-form
application, the screen presses register on all of the consecutive
loading forms.
We have two ideas for fixing this problem, but have had no luck with
either. The first is that when pressing on any button that leads to a
form change, we ask the device to lock (stop accepting input) and then
unlock the device once the form change is complete. I have checked just
about every group and the MSDN in an attempt to find out how to do
this, but there does not appear to be reference material in regards to
how to accomplish this.
The second idea was tag the message queue and filter out the messages
that occur during the times when the pages are loading, but this, in
concept, sounds like it may be unreliable and perhaps risky, as
important messages may be discarded.
Any advice on how to either lock the screen briefly from accepting
input or somehow filter button presses across multiple forms?
As a side note, we have tried changing pages to temporary loading
pages, and this failed for two reasons. First, the users felt that this
was confusing, and second, for many of the pages, the loading time is
so short that we would have to put the loading screen up for a minimum
"observable" time.
Thank you,
-Sam O.